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Clinical Practice Guidelines

The guide has the resources and methodology for developing and updating clinical practice guideline.

Guideline Search Engine

This search engine is a custom Google Search of clinical guideline websites. You may search using Google conventions (i.e. putting quotation marks around phrases: "breast cancer").

What are Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG)?

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) defines clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) as "...statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care that are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and harms of alternative care options" [IOM 2011].

Clinical Practice Guidelines are produced by different government agencies or professional organizations at the local, regional or national level. Many guidelines are published, and they vary in quality. Guidelines produced by different organizations may give different recommendations, and some may not be credible. (See more in "Overview of clinical practice guidelines")

Evaluating the quality of guidelines

The following tools can help you evaluate the quality of a guideline you're unfamiliar with:

 

AGREE II Instrument

 

Finding Clinical Practice Guidelines

When using Research Medical Library databases (PubMed or MEDLINE), you can can limit your search to "practice guidelines," which is under "Publication Types (PT)". For other types of practice guidance, you may try terms for "consensus development conference" (PT), "consensus," "position statement," "practice parameter," "appropriate use criteria," "guidance statements" or variations of those terms. More practically, when you search PubMed from the Research Medical Library website, you may simply use the built-in "Practice Guidelines" filter on the right column of the screen to limit your search results to practice guidelines.

Guidelines can be found at the websites of professional organizations. Currently, there is no single search engine that searches all guidelines. You may use this Google custom guideline search engine.